


Day 30 -- Toffee Apples

by MelayneSeahawk



Series: Scarves n Hats 2005 [30]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelayneSeahawk/pseuds/MelayneSeahawk





	Day 30 -- Toffee Apples

Remus' kisses tasted like the toffee apples they'd helped Lily make for the Order Halloween party, sweet candy and slightly tart apple blending into a flavor Sirius would always equate with the holiday.

Mrs. Black always had toffee apples at her Halloween parties when Sirius was little, beautifully dipped and decorated things that the House Elves had always slaved over and Sirius' relatives had eaten with knives, forks, and impossibly little mess. They had been beautiful but tasteless, phrases that Sirius would later apply to his cousins with a sardonic twist to his lips, and he'd not known they could be any other way until Hogwarts.

Hogwarts toffee apples were big and relatively simple in appearance, but their flavor burst over the tongue with the first bite and hung on long after the apple was gone. They were eaten as much on the sly between classes as in the Great Hall and never with anything other than fingers, juice dripping down the chins of first and seventh years alike.

It had taken the Marauders three years to convince the House Elves to give up the recipe to the apples, the particular way they mixed the toffee to get just the right crunch when it hardened, the twirl as they came out of the pot that kept the apples on their sticks and created the star-like swirl of candy right at the point where the stick left the apple that left the rest of the stick clean to hold. They had hoarded that secret until graduation, and the following fall Godric's Hollow smelled of apples – Mackintosh were best – and toffee from September until the end of November, when the approaching winter was better suited to cocoa and eggnog.

The apples had been a success at that year's party, greeting the chefs with delighted first bites and many compliments. Dumbledore's eyes had twinkled knowingly when he ate his, but did not give away their secret. Lily gleefully denied using magic to make them, and refused to share the recipe. And on their way out the door, after everything had been cleaned up and the last sticks tossed in the garbage, Remus had pulled Sirius aside and kissed him, tasting of toffee and apples and joy.

It was this memory, one of the last happy ones before the war really began, before the deaths and the lies, that kept Sirius going throughout the years in Azkaban, as much as turning into Padfoot. The joy in that memory would have been enough to summon a Patronus, had he had a wand, and was too strong for even the Dementors to take away.


End file.
